Yo!

Welcome to "Bucket of Parts", the blog for transplant info. :)

The reason I've called this "Bucket of Parts"--I stole it from the old Mr. Potato Head commercials. "Mr. Potato Head / And his bucket of parts"...given that since I have a stranger's lungs in me, it's occured to me that our body parts are, essentially, interchangable! Which is definitely a good thing, or I wouldn't be sitting here blogging with you.

Some back ground: I'm Emily DeArdo, and I was the first double-lung transplant recipient at Columbus Children's Hospital last July (yikes, almost a year!). Since the transplant already happened, I'm going to do a little bit of flashback for these first few posts, and then hopefully we'll be brought up to date pretty soon.

My blog is green b/c that's the color of organ donation--green and blue. I am going to say, again and again, that you should DEFINITELY be an organ donor! It's so easy, it doesn't cost a thing, and it saves lives every single day. Without the generosity of my donor and her family, I wouldn't be here. And that would be too sad. :)

I'm twenty-four years old and hold two degrees from Capital University here in Columbus, one in Political Science and the other in English Literature. I have two siblings, a brother, Bryan, who's a 20 year old sophomore at OSU, and a sister, Melanie, who's a 16 year old sophomore at Pickerington North H.S. I graduated with honors from Pickerington High School (GO TIGERS!!) and currently am employed by the Ohio Senate in the Communications Office.

Now that you know something about me, let's get going...

Enjoy! And if you're a transplant recipient, feel free to post as we go!!

Emily